TRIBUTES are pouring in for former councillor and Swanage Town Mayor Julie Wheeldon, who passed away aged 85 on October 30.

Julie will be best remembered not only for serving three terms as the Swanage Town Mayor, but also for her "larger than life character."

Julie moved to Swanage from Hertfordshire in the mid-1960s with her parents Frank and Amy Hayward and brother Victor.

She loved the historic character of Swanage, with its isolated charm, beautiful setting, uniqueness and quirkiness.

The family ran Maidments the grocery shop in Station Road.

In due course, Julie was to marry Billy Wheeldon at Poole Registry Office, Lucie being their only child.

20 years after arriving in the town, Julie became involved in local political affairs, the turning point being the Marina issue of the mid-1980s - perhaps the most divisive in the town's history.

The decision went all the way to the House of Lords, with Julie proving adept as one of those presenting the case against a modern marina in Victorian Swanage.

The matter was settled when, by a narrow margin, their Lordships agreed with Julie and the Swanage delegation.

Subsequently Julie was elected to the Town Council in 1987 and to Purbeck District Council in 1988, being re-elected to both several times and never losing an election.

Julie became a long-term fixture as Chairman of the Purbeck District Planning Committee, where she met Senior Planning Officer Alan Davies.

He said: "We have lost a true character, someone who loved Swanage and Purbeck. With Julie chairing the Planning Committee it was always an interesting experience. She was the life of the party when I drove the minibus for the Planning Committee site visits. One of her favourite expressions for something she didn't like at Committee was: 'It's like a pea on a drum', which always made me chuckle despite sometimes being unsure of exactly what she meant.

"On occasions she would have her own agenda, which of course was quite acceptable, but I felt she would listen to officers like myself and at least go some way towards respecting our views, even if she finally felt it necessary to vote the opposite way to our recommendation.

"Not many people call me 'darling' these days, as she did. She would always ask after my children and tell me about all the animals living in her garden."

As a councillor, Julie took a particular interest in housing, and many people in Swanage today owe their housing to Julie, who went out of her way to try and get Swanage people in housing re-housed in the town rather than elsewhere.

She is considered to have been a very effective councillor, who had unexpected methods up her sleeves.

At one point travellers took over King George's Playing Field and wouldn't budge.

Time went on but no-one could shift them - not the Town Council, the District Council or the County - not even the police.

Police reinforcements or more drastic measures were under consideration, until Julie turned up at the scene and disappeared into one of the caravans.

She emerged a short while later and within one hour the travellers were on their way.

What she said to them, or did, is unknown to this day.

Julie became Deputy Mayor in 1991 and remained in that position until 1994, with those years being described as a time of "unprecedented investment and change in Swanage, engineered to a large extent by the Town Council."

Innovations included a thoroughgoing seafront enhancement scheme, fundamental flood alleviation measures, a new town centre supermarket near the railway station (which required a town referendum), the creation of the Purbeck Business Centre based on the former PAVA building, the restoration of the pier, and a "state-of-the-art" sewerage improvement scheme and treatment plant.

Despite the success of these changes, many were controversial and caused considerable ill-feeling in certain quarters.

Julie became Mayor in 1994 and found she had inherited a situation requiring a period of calm, mutual toleration and drawing together - qualities not always associated with someone seen as feisty and outspoken.

Councillor Bill Trite said: "That year and Julie's two further years as Mayor were characterised by consolidation and re-unifying of the town showed the true breadth of her abilities and her determination that Swanage, under her leadership, should resume the nature and persona which had first meant so much to her.

"She would talk to anyone and listen to anyone, and if she could help someone in some way she would always do so, even in cases where she had already indelicately explained to the person concerned that he or she was the author of his or her own misfortune. And as was so often said, she had a wicked sense of humour."

Julie is survived by her daughter Lucie, son-in-law Robert and grandson Samuel, and her close companion of many years, Tom.